Chapter 540:
An Unexpected Action
AS WE GOT CLOSER TO THE DUMP, the serpent’s giant body came into view between the trees. I thought it had moved far away, but it had apparently stayed close.
“Which side is its head on?” I pondered.
My father looked at the body. “If the scales had a front and back side, we could tell…but they don’t.” He shook his head. “Anyway, let’s go to the dump. If it’s tails, we can just give it a little tap to signal we’re here.”
I nodded in agreement and headed toward the dump.
“I hope we get heads,” he said.
“Me, too.”
When we got to the dump, a serpent face turned to peer at us from between the trees.
“Oh, good. Looks like we got heads,” I said.
“That is good news…but why’s it acting like that?”
I looked at the serpent. Just when our gazes were about to meet, the Snakey darted behind the tree. My slimes, who had popped out of their bag, also looked puzzled.
“Snakey, is something wrong?” I asked.
Snakey slowly showed its face. It looked a bit worried. Had I ever seen a Snakey look like that before?
After a thoughtful pause, my father said, “Maybe the serpent is anxious because of how it acted earlier?”
How it acted earlier… Oh, the way our eyes met, but it slithered right by without acknowledging us? But Snakey did that for our benefit, so there’s nothing to worry about.
But Snakey’s face twitched, which seemed to mean my father’s theory was correct. Then the Snakey face darted behind a tree again.
“I guess…the serpent thinks it’s hiding?” my father suggested.
I ran my eyes over the span of the serpent’s body. It was big enough that you could see all of it through the trees, but its face somehow managed to stay hidden.
“Adorable,” I said with a smile.
Snakey flinched a little. My father and I had a good chuckle over that.
“Snakey, thanks for helping us out back there. You saved the day.”
Snakey peeked out from behind the tree. I quietly walked up to it and gently petted its nose. As Snakey stared intently at me, I thanked it again.
“Krr-krr-krr-krr!”
When I heard the strange sound next to me, I looked at Snakey.
“Krr-krr-krr-krr!”
Oh, now I remember! That’s how Snakeys purr when they’re happy. I remember hearing it once before. It was when we returned the lost little black orb to Snakey. Yeah, I’m sure that was it.
“Haven’t heard that sound in a while,” my father remarked as he walked up to Snakey and gave its nose a little pat.
“Yeah, we don’t hear it that often.”
You know, we didn’t even hear the sound when we were traveling with the Snakey caravan. I wonder what conditions cause them to make it?
“Pu! Pu, puuu.”
“Te! Ryu, ryuuu.”
I turned to look at Sora and Flame, who were enjoying their meal at the dump. When did they start eating? They…did have breakfast, right?
“They’ve always got a huge appetite when we take them to the dump.” My father sounded a little tired.
Pong!
Gasping at the magic stone-reviving noise, my father and I nervously looked at Flame. When our eyes met, it quickly looked away.
“Looks like Flame got a little too excited and made the stone by accident,” I remarked.
Flame stared hard at the magic stone on the ground…then casually tossed it into the pieces of trash.
“No, you can’t do that, Flame. That magic stone’s color was very unique…”
I dove into the trash and picked up the magic stone Flame had dropped. It was transparent with no impurities—that I had seen before. But the stone I held in my hand now was a mixture of green and black.
“Wow, what an incredible combination of colors…”
Green magic stones amplified wind magic, and black ones purified summoning circles. Wind and purification.
“I have heard that some wind magic users also have the power to heal,” my father said.
The power to heal? But black is for purification.
“It’s kind of a rare phenomenon, though. Then again, black magic stones have nothing to do with it.”
I puzzled over my father’s words.
Hmmm…purification purges people of unnecessary substances and calms them. You could say it’s like healing…is that what he meant? Maybe I’m wrong.
“But why did Flame restore that magic stone right now?” My father stared hard at Flame, who jiggled and went back to eating potions. Though the slime had seemed upset by making that potion, it apparently no longer cared. What a cheeky little scamp.
What my father said still makes no sense. Why did he emphasize the word “now”?
“Hey, Dad, what did you mean by that?”
“Flame creates the magic stones we need with exquisite timing, so I was just thinking Ciel might need that stone soon.”
That’s right…Flame did do that. Ciel could only come into villages with us because of the magic stone Flame made. Without it, we would have left Ciel outdoors during the coldest winter ever.
I looked at Flame. The slime no longer seemed interested in the magic stone. Wait a minute, I think I know what you just did…!
“Flame, stop. You’ve eaten too much.”
Flame had just eaten thirty-two potions. That was way too much.
“Um, Ivy…Sora had ten swords and thirty potions.”
“Sora!”
“Pu! Puuu?”
“Te-ryuuu?”
Oh, you two are acting all innocent, but you know you’ve been bad. You’ve overeaten so badly before that you couldn’t move.
“Maybe some other time, okay?” I picked up the two slimes and left the dump. My father followed, carrying Sol.
“You know, Sol hasn’t been overindulging so much anymore,” he remarked.
He was right. When we started traveling together, Sol had scarfed down magic items like there was no tomorrow, but the slime had calmed down lately.
“Pu! Pu!”
“Teryu!”
Sora and Flame chirped indignantly in reply. They were probably trying to deny that they had overindulged, but I thought eating a large pile of potions and swords in a short period of time fit that category. Then again, the only negative effects overindulging seemed to have on them was making their slime bodies too heavy for them to move.
“You both eat big breakfasts, too,” I scolded the slimes.
Whenever there was a dump nearby, we always let them eat bigger meals, because they sometimes had no choice but to eat less when we were on the road.
“Puuu!” Sora whined.
My father smiled. Sora was far too greedy.
Oh, I recognize this aura!
“Zinal is on his way,” my father observed, picking up on their presence, too. “I guess the other person with him is Fische?”
“Yeah, feels like Fische.”
After a while, they came into view. Fische had a hard-to-read look of fatigue on his face. Had they run into some trouble?
“Something happen to you guys?” my father asked.
“The sheer stupidity of our enemy wore us out,” Fische sighed.
What happened to them? And in such a short time, too…
“Somebody tried to stop us from coming back to the village. And when we went out into the forest, people said all sorts of crap about us.” Zinal shrugged his shoulders.
Somebody tried to stop them from coming back to the village? Why?
“They probably thought we were gonna bring backup with us.”
That makes sense.
“The village watch platoon captain was at the village gate, and he was very, uh… Ugh.”
Fische sighed his lungs out. He really was exhausted.
The platoon captain of the village watch, eh? Wait, he was at the gate? Oh no…was he waiting there for the gatekeepers to die? No, that’s just way too evil…
“And nothing even happened, yet he had twenty watchmen with him.”
“You’re right to be annoyed. Nothing had happened yet back then.”
My father looked just as exasperated. And why wouldn’t he be? The watchmen had acted like they were expecting trouble to go down. To think that a platoon captain would take the initiative to do something foolish.
I tilted my head and frowned. “Are these people even stupider than we thought?”